1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for obtaining colored video images having a three dimensional effect, and particularly to a device for producing three-dimensionally-perceived images on a monitor with multiple liquid crystal screens.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of the known techniques to have colored video images with three dimensional (3D) effect, are generated by computer, adding perspective on the plane and shading the images, as in the virtual reality technique as in the computer animation, or in the images simulation by computer, adding color to topographic cartoons (commonly in submarine images obtained by sonar techniques), but in these cases, the images are displayed on a flat (or almost flat) screen device with only one image, as in the traditional cathode rays tube (CRT) or the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen, which uses technologies such as Thin Film Transistor (TFT, or Passive Matrix Technology), therefore the liquid crystal display's design and manufacturing are oriented to the flat screens, however, these methods for three dimensional simulation on a flat screen make impossible to display images with a real three dimensional or relief perception. Among the existing techniques trying to solve the perception of flat video images and to achieve a three dimensional appearing image, there are methods such as generate stereoscopic images, which consists in to have two exposures of a flat images from the same recorded or photographed object taken in two lightly separated angles (roughly 6.5 cm apart), and sometimes including a third image, which are viewed at the same time on a special glasses with filters to prevent the viewing of one or the other images, or well by using a flat LCD screens, where is displayed a separated image for each eye, and by simultaneously catching the two images from different angles, in the viewer's brain a stereoscopic image perception is produced, and then simulating an only image with the resulting visual perception of relief or depth.
On the other hand, in order to transmit and receive three dimensional appearing images on direct (or in real time) with no special glasses, some firms on the televise media applications development, has been experimented with the holographic projection technology, also with the stereoscopic projection which uses special glasses, with the images projection on plasma screens, and the images projection on a LCD screen that filters the light in order to each image is caught by one of the viewer's eyes, but all these techniques and the corresponding designs are expensive and not very practical commercially, therefore at the present, a practical and attractive way to record and transmit video images in real time (or direct) with a three dimensional perception, is not achieved.
In order to solve these and other drawbacks, in the present invention the use of a color digital video camera working together with a sonar system is proposed, where the signals from the two systems are transmitted to an electronic system which contains a logic circuit formed with integrated circuits. In such a camera the conventional flat screen is replaced by a device with several overlapped LCD screens, in order the achieve the displaying of video images with three dimensional or relief effect; the magnetic tape recording system is modified in order to store the audio signal as recorded by the camera microphone, the video and the depth signal, all in the same magnetic tape device.